Adam Savage Quotes

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.

Adam had seen many of Ronan's dreams made real by now, and he knew how savage and lovely and terrifying and whimsical they could be. But this girl was the most Ronan of any of them that he's seen. What a frightened monster she was.

When in doubt, C-4.

Failure is always an option

Gravity. It's not just a good idea; it's the law!

Jack of all trades, master of none, though often better than a master of one.

Am I missing an eyebrow?

I believe that rules do not make us moral; loving each other makes us moral.

sticks and stones can only break bones; but words can shatter the soul

Bad spellers of the world untie!

It doesn’t matter if you’re a model maker, a potter, a dancer, a programmer, a writer, a political activist, a teacher, a musician, a milliner, whatever. It’s all the same. Making is making, and none of it is failure.

Adam had seen many of Ronan's dreams made real by now, and he knew how savage and lovely and terrifying and whimsical they could be. But this girl was the most Ronan of any of them that he'd seen. What a frightened monster she was

My workplace is wherever I'm making something, which could be in a field in gold country, or in an abandoned warehouse on a military base.

I love lists. Always have. when I was 14, I wrote down every dirty word I knew on file cards and placed them in alphabetical order. I have a thing about about collections, and a list is a collection with purchase. (Wired Magazine, "Step One: Make a List", October 2012)

Ronan pointed at the cart. "Get in there." "What?" He just continued pointing. Adam said, "Give me a break. This is a public parking lot." "Don't make this ugly, Parrish." As an old lady headed past them, Adam sighed and climbed into the basket of the shopping cart. He drew his knees up so that he would fit. He was full of the knowledge that this was probably going to end with scabs. Ronan gripped the handle with the skittish concentration of a motorcycle racer and eyed the line between them and the BMW parked on the far side of the lot. "What do you think the grade is on this parking lot?" "C plus, maybe a B. Oh. I don't know. Ten degrees?" Adam held the sides of the cart and then thought better of it. He held himself instead. With a savage smile, Ronan shoved the cart off the curb and belted towards the BMW. As they picked up speed, Ronan called out a joyful and awful swear and then jumped on to the back of the cart himself. As they hurtled towards the BMW, Adam realised that Ronan, as usual, had no intention of stopping before something bad happened. He cupped a hand over his nose just as they glanced off the side of the BMW. The unseated cart wobbled once, twice, and then tipped catastrophically on to its side. It kept skidding, the boys skidding along with it. The three of them came to a stop. "Oh, God," Adam said, touching the road burn on his elbow. It wasn't that bad, really. "God, God. I can feel my teeth." Ronan lay on his back a few feet away. A box of toothpaste rested on his chest and the cart keeled beside him. He looked profoundly happy. "You should tell me what you've found out about Greenmantle," Ronan said, "so that I can get started on my dreaming." Adam picked himself up before he got driven over. "When?" Ronan grinned.

Captain Smek himself appeared on television for an official speech to humankind. [...] 'Noble Savages of Earth,' he said. 'Long time we have tried to live together in peace.' (It had been five months.) 'Long time have the Boov suffered under the hostileness and intolerableness of you people. With sad hearts I now concede that Boov and humans will never to exist as one.' I remember being really excited at this point. Could I possibly be hearing right? Were the Boov about to leave? I was so stupid. 'And so now I generously grant you Human Preserves - gifts of land that will be for humans forever, never to be taken away again, now.' [...] So that's when we Americans were given Florida. One state for three hundred million people. There were going to be some serious lines for the bathrooms.

When we say we need to teach kids how to “fail,” we aren’t really telling the full truth. What we mean when we say that is simply that creation is iteration and that we need to give ourselves the room to try things that might not work in the pursuit of something that will.

You will wear the féth fiada until this is done, Amadan.” “Bloody hell,” Adam muttered savagely. “I hate being invisible.” “And Keltar,” Aoibheal said in a voice like sudden thunder, with a glance up at the balustrade. “Henceforth I would advise against tampering with my curses. Perform the Lughnassadh ritual now or face my wrath.” “Aye, Queen Aoibheal,” Dageus and Drustan replied together, stepping our from behind stone columns bracketing the stairs. Adam smiled faintly. He should have known no Highlander would flee, only retreat to a higher vantage – take to the hills, in a manner of speaking – waiting in silent readiness should battle be necessary.

I began furiously making lists, and more lists, until I was making lists of lists . . . .

The best part of making a list is, you guessed it, crossing things off.

Greg Broadmore's fertile and twisted imagination has conjoined multiple genres, memories, and a sharp sense of pulp, colonialist nostalgia/parody in this lavish, fully realized, imaginative tour-de-force. It's Jules Verne meets Fritz Lang meets Tintin. It's beyond Steampunk. It's clearly an insatiable passion for the talismans of a bygone civilization and it's slavish addiction to the early industrial age in all it's filigreed, ignorant glory. Greg has raised the bar.

Wrong turns are part of every journey. They are, as Kurt Vonnegut was fond of saying, “dancing lessons from God,” and the last thing we want to do is give our kids two left feet.

I have concluded through careful empirical analysis and much thought that somebody is looking out for me, keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less than I ought. Giving me strength to shoot for more than I think I’m capable of. I believe they know everything that I do and think, and they still love me, and I’ve concluded, after careful consideration, that this person keeping score is me.

It has always been a mystery to me how Adam, Eve, and the serpent were taught the same language. Where did they get it? We know now, that it requires a great number of years to form a language; that it is of exceedingly slow growth. We also know that by language, man conveys to his fellows the impressions made upon him by what he sees, hears, smells and touches. We know that the language of the savage consists of a few sounds, capable of expressing only a few ideas or states of the mind, such as love, desire, fear, hatred, aversion and contempt. Many centuries are required to produce a language capable of expressing complex ideas. It does not seem to me that ideas can be manufactured by a deity and put in the brain of man. These ideas must be the result of observation and experience.

We are tired of living under this tyranny. We cannot endure that our women and children are taken away And dealt with by the white savages. We shall make war. . . . We know that we shall die, but we want to die. We want to die.

This is one of the main reasons I believe that adolescence can be so fraught for so many. Just as we start to catch the barest glimpses of our true selves and begin to understand what it is about the world that fascinates and intrigues us, we often run right into people who aren’t ready to be encouraging and can be downright hostile to someone being “different.

the accommodation of a European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.

Humanity's savageness is what makes it civilized. Technology, trade, computers, space travel. All are products of competition and conflict.

There is no skill in the world, I have since discovered, at which you get better the less sleep you have.

the reports of which were so harrowing—forced abortions, amputations, communal executions—that I invented the blood harvesting as a less savage stand-in,

it was only the normal Angst that periodically takes undergraduates into its grip, particularly when they have essays to write, but it had seemed a dark and savage weight at the time.

and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

Think on your Red Indians, Adam, think on the treaties you Americans abrogate & renege on, time & time & time again. More humane, surely & more honest, just to knock the savages on the head & get it over with?

Old Rekohu’s claim to singularity, however, lay in its unique pacific creed. Since time immemorial, the Moriori’s priestly caste dictated that whosoever spilt a man’s blood killed his own mana - his honor, his worth, his standing & his soul. No Moriori would shelter, feed, converse with, or even see the persona non grata. If the ostracized murderer survived his first winter, the desperation of solitude usually drove him to a blowhole on Cape Young, where he took his life. Consider this, Mr. D’Arnoq urged us. Two thousand savages (Mr. Evans’s best guess) enshrine “Thou Shalt Not Kill” in word & in deed & frame an oral “Magna Carta” to create a harmony unknown elsewhere for the sixty centuries since Adam first tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. War was as alien a concept to the Moriori as the telescope is to the Pygmy. Peace, not a hiatus betwixt wars but millennia of imperishable peace, rules these far-flung islands. Who can deny Old Rekohu lay closer to More’s Utopia than our States of Progress governed by war-hungry princelings in Versailles & Vienna, Washington & Westminster? “Here,” declaimed Mr. D’Arnoq, “and where only, were those elusive phantasms, those noble savages, framed in flesh & blood!” (Henry, as we later made our back to the Musket confessed, “I could never describe a race of savages too backwards to throw a spear as ‘noble.

After years of working with missionaries, I am tempted to conclude that their endeavors merely prolong a dying race's agonies for ten or twenty years. The merciful plowman shoots a trusty horse grown too old for service. As philanthropists, might it not be our duty to likewise ameliorate the savages' sufferings by hastening their extinction? Think of your Red Indians, Adam, think on the treaties you Americans abrogate & renege on, time & time & time again. More humane, surely & more honest, just to knock the savages on the head & get it over with?

Adam searched out old friends from the neighborhood. They drank beer together in the garden of the Stag & Hounds, trading stories and trying their best to ignore the inescapable truth - that the ties that once bound them were loosening by the year and might soon be gone altogether.

Ford leaped to the controls—only a few of them made any immediate sense to him so he pulled those. The ship shook and screamed as its guidance rocket jets tried to push it every which way simultaneously. He released half of them and the ship spun round in a tight arc and headed back the way it had come, straight toward the oncoming missiles. Air cushions ballooned out of the walls in an instant as everyone was thrown against them. For a few seconds the inertial forces held them flattened and squirming for breath, unable to move. Zaphod struggled and pushed in manic desperation and finally managed a savage kick at a small lever

Elected fifth president of the United States, Monroe transformed a fragile little nation - "a savage wilderness," as Edmund Burke put it - into "a glorious empire." Although George Washington had won the nation's independence, he bequeathed a relatively small country, rent by political factions, beset by foreign enemies, populated by a largely unskilled, unpropertied people, and ruled by oligarchs who controlled most of the nation's land and wealth. Washington's three successors - John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison - were mere caretaker presidents who left the nation bankrupt, its people deeply divided, its borders under attack, its capital city in ashes.

How is it possible to manage a group of dozens of artists to keep to a cohesive vision? At dinner that night I asked Guillermo how he did it. “You have to give everyone complete autonomy within a narrow bandwidth,” he replied. What he meant was that after you get their buy-in on the larger vision, you need to strictly define their roles in the fulfillment of that vision, and then you need to set them free to do their thing. You want the people helping you to be energized and involved; you want them contributing their creativity, not just following your orders. Giving them creative autonomy rewards their individual genius while keeping them oriented to the North Star of your larger shared vision.

Now I love lists. I like long detailed lists. I like big unruly lists. I like sorting unsorted lists into outline form, then separating out their topics into lists of their own. Every single project I do involves the making of lists. I make them for organization, of course, but I also make them for assessment, for momentum as a stress reliever, and, counterintuitively, as a means to improve my creativity and free my thinking. There are daily lists, there are project lists. There are “things to order” lists. I make lists of pieces of research that I want together, lists of people I am collaborating with . . . . I make lists of things I need to purchase, things I need to find, and when all of those objects are going to get to me. And hopefully, finally, there are “homestretch” lists, that tell me I’m reaching the end.

Government is a plain, simple, intelligent thing, founded in nature and reason, quite comprehensible by common sense [the Dissertation continued]. . . . The true source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think. . . . Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write. . . . Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments . . . that many of our rights are inherent and essential, agreed on as maxims and established as preliminaries, even before Parliament existed. . . . Let us read and recollect and impress upon our souls the views and ends of our more immediate forefathers, in exchanging their native country for a dreary, inhospitable wilderness. . . . Recollect their amazing fortitude, their bitter sufferings—the hunger, the nakedness, the cold, which they patiently endured—the severe labors of clearing their grounds, building their houses, raising their provisions, amidst dangers from wild beasts and savage men, before they had time or money or materials for commerce. Recollect the civil and religious principles and hopes and expectations which constantly supported and carried them through all hardships with patience and resignation. Let us recollect it was liberty, the hope of liberty, for themselves and us and ours, which conquered all discouragements, dangers, and trials.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, August 14, 1984, three children—Germaine (“Jamie”) Elinor Rowan, Adam Robert Ryan and Peter Joseph Savage, all aged twelve—were playing in the road where their houses stood, in the small County Dublin town of Knocknaree. As it was a hot, clear day, many residents were in their gardens, and numerous witnesses saw the children at various times during the afternoon, balancing along the wall at the end of the road, riding their bicycles and swinging on a tire swing.

In a religion that holds the flesh accursed, woman becomes the devil's most fearsome temptation. Tertullian writes: 'Woman, you are the devil's doorway. You have led astray one whom the devil would not dare attack directly. It is your fault that the Son of God had to die; you should always go in mourning and in rags.' St. Ambrose: 'Adam was led to sin by Eve and not Eve by Adam. It is just and right that woman accept as lord and master him whom she led to sin.' And St. John Chysostom: 'Among all the savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman.

And now he learned how men can consider other men as beasts and that the easiest way to get along with such men was to be a beast. A clean face, an open face, an eye raised to meet an eye—these drew attention and attention drawn brought punishment. Adam thought how a man doing an ugly or a brutal thing has hurt himself and must punish someone for the hurt. To be guarded at work by men with shotguns, to be shackled by the ankle at night to a chain, were simple matters of precaution, but the savage whippings for the least stir of will, for the smallest shred of dignity or resistance, these seemed to indicate that guards were afraid of prisoners, and Adam knew from his years in the army that a man afraid is a dangerous animal. And Adam, like anyone in the world, feared what whipping would do to his body and his spirit. He drew a curtain around himself. He removed expression from his face, light from his eyes, and silenced his speech. Later he was not so much astonished that it had happened to him but that he had been able to take it and with a minimum of pain. It was much more horrible afterward than when it was happening. It is a triumph of self-control to see a man whipped until the muscles of his back show white and glistening through the cuts and to give no sign of pity or anger or interest. And Adam learned this.

Consider this, Mr. D’Arnoq urged us. Two thousand savages (Mr. Evans’s best guess) enshrine “Thou Shalt Not Kill” in word & in deed & frame an oral “Magna Carta” to create a harmony unknown elsewhere for the sixty centuries since Adam tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. War was as alien a concept to the Moriori as the telescope is to the Pygmy. Peace, not a hiatus betwixt wars but millennia of imperishable peace, rules these far-flung islands. Who can deny Old Rēkohu lay closer to More’s Utopia than our States of Progress governed by war-hungry princelings in Versailles & Vienna, Washington & Westminster? “Here,” declaimed Mr. D’Arnoq, “and here only, were those elusive phantasms, the noble savages, framed in flesh & blood!

Now, an important word from our Minister of Defense: Certainly the loudspeaker in each and every apartment in North Korea provides news, announcements, and cultural programming, but it must be reminded that it was by Great Leader Kim Il Sung's decree in 1973 that an anti-raid warning system be installed across this nation, and a properly functioning early-warning network is of supreme importance. The Inuit people are a tribe of isolate savages that live near the North Pole. Their boots are called mukluk. Ask your neighbor later today, what is a mukluk? If he does not know, perhaps there is a malfunction with his loudspeaker, or perhaps it has for some reason become accidentally disconnected. By reporting this, you could be saving his life the next time the Americans sneak-attack our great nation.

Mag Rogan and I stood on the edge of a cliff. Below us, the ground plunged so far down that it was as if the planet itself had ended at our feet. The wind tugged at my hair. He was wearing those dark pants again and nothing else. The hard muscle corded his torso, fueled by an overpowering, almost savage strength. Not the mindless brutality of a common thug or the cruel power of an animal, but an intelligent, stubborn, human strength. It was everywhere: in the set of his broad shoulders, in the turn of his head on a muscular neck, in the tilt of his square jaw. He turned to me and his whole body tightened, the muscles flexing and hardening, his hands ready to grip and crush, his eyes alert, missing nothing, and blazing with the brilliant electric blue of magic. I could picture him getting his sword and walking alone onto the drawbridge to defend his castle against a horde of invaders with that exact look on his face. He was terrifying, and I wanted to run my hands down that chest and feel the hard ridges of his abs. I was some special kind of idiot. Magic roiled about him, ferocious and alive, a pet monster with vicious teeth. He moved toward me, bringing it with him. “Tell me about Adam Pierce.” I reached over and put my hand on his chest. His skin was burning hot. The muscle tensed under my fingers. An eager electric shiver ran through me. I wanted to lean against that chest and kiss the underside of that jaw, tasting his sweat on my tongue. I wanted him to like it. “What happened to the boy?” I asked. “The one who destroyed a city in Mexico? Is he still inside?” “Nevada!” My mother’s voice cut through my dreams like a knife. I sat straight up in my bed. Okay. I was either way more messed up inside, or Mad Rogan was a strong projector and could shoot images straight into my mind. Either way was bad. What happened to the boy . . . I needed to have my head examined.

In The Descent of Man, Darwin says: With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. This is pure Malthus. So is the demurral: “[We could not] check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature … We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind…” None of this is abstract or general or innocent of political history or implication. The Descent of Man (1871) is a late work which seems to be largely ignored by Darwinists now.

The ownership of land is not natural. The American savage, ranging through forests who game and timber are the common benefits of all his kind, fails to comprehend it. The nomad traversing the desert does not ask to whom belong the shifting sands that extend around him as far as the horizon. The Caledonian shepherd leads his flock to graze wherever a patch of nutritious greenness shows amidst the heather. All of these recognise authority. They are not anarchists. They have chieftains and overlords to whom they are as romantically devoted as any European subject might be to a monarch. Nor do they hold as the first Christians did, that all land should be held in common. Rather, they do not consider it as a thing that can be parceled out. “We are not so innocent. When humanity first understood that a man’s strength could create good to be marketed, that a woman’s beauty was itself a commodity for trade, then slavery was born. So since Adam learnt to force the earth to feed him, fertile ground has become too profitable to be left in peace. “This vital stuff that lives beneath our feet is a treasury of all times. The past: it is packed with metals and sparkling stones, riches made by the work of aeons. The future: it contains seeds and eggs: tight-packed promises which will unfurl into wonders more fantastical than ever jeweller dreamed of -- the scuttling centipede, the many-branched tree whose roots, fumbling down into darkness, are as large and cunningly shaped as the boughs that toss in light. The present: it teems. At barely a spade’s depth the mouldy-warp travels beneath my feet: who can imagine what may live a fathom down? We cannot know for certain that the fables of serpents curving around roots of mighty trees, or of dragons guarding treasure in perpetual darkness, are without factual reality. “How can any man own a thing so volatile and so rich? Yet we followers of Cain have made of our world a great carpet, whose pieces can be lopped off and traded as though it were inert as tufted wool.

It was a charming and delightful day at Lord's as Ford and Arthur tumbled haphazardly out of a space-time anomaly and hit the immaculate turf rather hard. The applause of the crowd was tremendous. It wasn't for them, but instinctively they bowed anyway, which was fortunate because the small red heavy ball which the crowd actually had been applauding whistled mere millimetres over Arthur's head. In the crowd a man collapsed. They threw themselves back to the ground which seemed to spin hideously around them. "What was that?" hissed Arthur. "Something red," hissed Ford back at him. "Where are we?" "Er, somewhere green." "Shapes," muttered Arthur. "I need shapes." The applause of the crowd had been rapidly succeeded by gasps of astonishment, and the awkward titters of hundreds of people who could not yet make up their minds about whether to believe what they had just seen or not. "This your sofa?" said a voice. "What was that?" whispered Ford. Arthur looked up. "Something blue," he said. "Shape?" said Ford. Arthur looked again. "It is shaped," he hissed at Ford, with his brow savagely furrowing, "like a policeman." They remained crouched there for a few moments, frowning deeply. The blue thing shaped like a policeman tapped them both on the shoulders. "Come on, you two," the shape said, "let's be having you." These words had an electrifying effect on Arthur. He leapt to his feet like an author hearing the phone ring and shot a series of startled glanced at the panorama around him which had suddenly settled down into something of quite terrifying ordinariness. "Where did you get this from?" he yelled at the policeman shape. "What did you say?" said the startled shape. "This is Lord's Cricket Ground, isn't it?" snapped Arthur. "Where did you find it, how did you get it here? I think," he added, clasping his hand to his brow, "that I had better calm down." He squatted down abruptly in front of Ford. "It is a policeman," he said, "What do we do?" Ford shrugged. "What do you want to do?" he said. "I want you," said Arthur, "to tell me that I have been dreaming for the last five years." Ford shrugged again, and obliged. "You've been dreaming for the last five years," he said. Arthur got to his feet. "It's all right, officer," he said. "I've been dreaming for the last five years. Ask him," he added, pointing at Ford, "he was in it.

I feel," he replied, "like a sweaty Englishman molesting a naked statue in the presence of a complete stranger." - Adam

What is a unicorn without his horn?" (Antonella) "A white horse?" (Adam) Antonella smiled. "A very unhappy white horse.

The rest of dinner was an ordeal. When Adam looked at Signora Docci, he saw Professor Leonard; when he looked at Antonella, he saw himself kissing her in the garden; and when he looked at Harry, he found himself wondering if one of them had been adopted.

When he visited his and Adam’s old bedroom, the thread of disapproval he’d felt during his proposal of a memorial became a rope, as he saw the savage absence not only of Adam but of himself. So when he shut the door on his family and stepped out into the rain it was an already belated act.

The completeness in me would not let this [missing of the lunchbox] stand. Once I caught the bug to fill out the frame of the 2001 Heywood Floyd tabloid that I have in my head, I couldn't shake off my desire, my need to obtain one of these lunch boxes. And if I could not buy it, well, then I would just going to build my own from scratch, which is what I need

Miss LaSalle was of the right age, tolerably pretty

In the end, Adam was forced to settle for his least favourite option — patience.

After many years of valuing his head over his heart, should he even be as certain of his own feelings as he thought he was? People talked about love enough, but he’d never heard anyone define it in a rigorous, scientific manner.

A lazy wind’ the old-timers called it. Blew right through you instead of taking the trouble to go around.

Although it is not my place to comment on your behaviour, I do feel that you might try to show a more friendly face to the world.” “Perhaps I might,” Adam irritated now, “if the world showed a better face towards me.” “Why should it, sir? I’m sure the world has more to worry about than the opinion you hold of it. It has always seemed to me that the world is much like a mirror. Scowl at it and the face you see scowls back. Smile and it will assume a more cheerful visage in return.

I did not know you were a philosopher, Miss LaSalle,” Adam said. He knew he was being disagreeable, but he could not help himself. “Are not all women, doctor? Else they could never cope with the way men treat them. Now, please stop trying to annoy me and do as I ask. I promise I will give you many more opportunities to vent your bad temper in my direction if you wait but a little.” Adam was defeated. If she persisted in responding with such wit and good humour to his truculence, he might as well give in. Yet he was still sulky enough not to want her to see his change of mood. “Oh, very well,” he said, sighing mightily. “If I must …” “Indeed you must, sir. Now come along and stop behaving like a small boy whose playthings are taken from him. Reassure your dear mother that you are not annoyed with her or I will be angry with you. Like the cat you think I am, I assure you I can bite and scratch with a will, if provoked.” With that, she stood aside to allow him to precede her through the doorway – and to conceal the way she stuck out her tongue at his back, once he had passed.

I promise I will give you many more opportunities to vent your bad temper in my direction if you wait but a little.

Miss LaSalle,” Adam cried. “Once again you have proved the sharpness of your mind and I congratulate you …” “Not on my beauty though,” the young woman said softly. “What? Oh … that too, I expect,” Adam said.

I cannot understand how you have reached almost to your thirtieth year and remained so ignorant of women, my son,” she said. “I am sure it is none of my doing. Perhaps if you had older sisters …” “What?” Mrs Bascom leaned forward and patted her son’s hand. “Never mind, Adam,” she said. “One day, God willing, a woman will be willing to take you in hand and address your education in the ways of our sex. This is not a task a mother can do.” She paused for a moment in reflection. “God send her great strength though, for I fear she will need it.

This city is full of girls like your Molly. It is impossible to stop the trade.” “It is indeed,” Miss LaSalle said, “since there are so many men who take advantage of it.

Thus fortified with virtuous thoughts of resuming what he imagined as the quiet and blameless existence of a country doctor, Adam reached his house in a more peaceful state of mind,

in the fresh air

He had them leave him at the Maid’s Head Inn in Norwich, where he knew he could get what he wanted most: a substantial breakfast. To eat heavily during a journey was not something he advised for others, nor did himself. The constant jolting along the road prevented the proper operation of the stomach. Coach passengers who indulged too heavily in food or drink were apt to suffer a violent indigestion. Some, he had read, even died when their hearts failed under the strain. Now his own travelling was over, at least for that day, Adam could satisfy his hunger without fear of the consequences.

his mother said. “How was your time in London?” “It is not a city I much relish,” Adam said. “It is too noisy and crowded.

Mrs Bascom said. “My son has to make his way in the world. He cannot always be at your beck and call.

Had you not, Doctor? Maybe you should have …” She stopped on a sudden and hung her head. “Alas, what a silly, vain creature I am. I promised not to taunt you and here I am doing that very thing. Take no notice of me, I pray you. It is but nervousness that I will say something stupid that makes me act thus. I will go to my room now. Good afternoon, sir. I believe you take a chaise from The Maid’s Head shortly and so will not be here for dinner. Permit me to wish you a pleasant journey.” With that, she left the room, causing Adam to feel even more puzzled by her behaviour than before.

Do not frighten our guest, Alice,” Miss Jempson said softly, “and do not embarrass me with thy exaggerations. Like many a grand lady, Doctor, Lady Alice defends herself when nervous by assuming a most aggressive manner.

Hannah had left a copy of The Norwich Intelligencer newspaper of two days ago on the table for him. Adam picked it up and began to read in the fashion typical of many, skipping over serious matters and seeking out amusing diversions.

As for ‘special looks’ – and men in general – she decided to avoid both, if all they brought her was such trouble.

may have been in a great hurry to reach Mossterton when he set out some fifteen minutes later, but Betty was not. She was not accustomed to being taken from her comfortable stable and hustled into her harness with so little ceremony. As a result, she decided to sulk – a skill she had polished to a fine edge of perfection. This involved refusing to go faster than a moderate walk. Added to this were sudden stops to express unreasonable fear of some harmless object by the roadside. Finally there were continual cold looks delivered in Adam’s direction over her shoulder. Had she been the temperamental and spoiled mistress of some great lord, she could not have put on a better display. It was all injured innocence oppressed by unreasonable demands.

You did not choose medicine, even as a last resort. It chose you.” “It is a hard task-master, Sir Daniel.” “Life is a hard master, Doctor, whatever profession or calling we follow.

Never underestimate the power of loving women, doctor. Most males can break the bonds of instruction or coercion with ease, but the sight of a woman snuffling over your ingratitude will reduce almost all to helpless obedience.

Engaging with my environment opened my eyes to the never-ending flow of ideas. But there's even another way to find inspiration, on that I have leaned on more and more as I've gotten older and more experienced: DIGGING RIGHT THROUGH THE BOTTOM OF THE RABBIT HOLE, by which I mean, going as deep as humanly possible on something you care greatly about, something you can't stop thinking about.

Among the well-intentioned men who were woefully backward in finance, if forward-looking in politics, were Hamilton’s three most savage critics of the 1790s: Jefferson, Madison, and Adams. These founders adhered to a static, archaic worldview that scorned banks, credit, and stock markets. From this perspective, Hamilton was the progressive figure of the era, his critics the conservatives.

Obsession is the gravity of making. It moves things, it binds them together, and gives them structure.

He greeted her with grave good manners and she replied with equal formality.  It was too much for Adam’s mother, who proved unable to contain her laughter.  ‘I imagine a condemned criminal and the hangman would show more warmth in their greeting than the two of you,’ she said, wiping tears from her eyes. ‘You are, I declare, as solemn as owls.

Although the calendar suggested spring must be advancing, the heavy clouds and constant drizzle gave the lie to such optimism.

I do not have the power to thank you enough, Dr Bascom,” she went on. “Nor will I ever have, though I live to be a hundred. And not just for what you have done for my husband, sir, but what you have done for me as well. I too slept last night for the first time in weeks. This morning, I have been able to sit here, with this little darling for company, looking out at the world with some hope that my nightmare is ending.” “My lady …” Adam began. “No, sir. I will bid you good day at once, lest I say more than I should and more than propriety will allow. Come again soon, very soon. My husband will be most glad to see you … and so will I.” With that, she rang a small bell set beside her chair and the maid returned in an instant. The speed with which this happened seemed indeed to bear out Sir Daniel’s remark that it did not do to keep the lady waiting.

I gather you made yet another appearance at an inquest in Gressington. I swear you attract murders, Bascom. All is quiet here for decades. Then you arrive and two men are murdered in that wretched little village within twelve months.

The man within is unchanged, even if his body is collapsing into the ultimate decay.

make the taste of a medicine fit the character of the patient? Say something acid and astringent for elderly females with the vapours. A throat-burning and peppery brew for red-faced squires. A seductively mild syrup with a foul aftertaste for bilious wives. Bland mixtures for arrogant sons, each certain to produce a violent flux after a few minutes?

Your mother’s friends spend their time exchanging gossip for the most part. They are rich, yet few are clever beyond the little needed to manipulate their husbands or current lovers.

The Marshall twins’ assertion that Betsy’s attractiveness had been matched by looseness of morals was mere jealousy and spite. Betsy had been more beautiful than either of them and that was sin enough to damn her in their eyes. They would never accept young men might prefer her for sensible reasons.

The moment had arrived. Adam and Lady Alice were left alone in the hallway. The trouble was that Adam could think of nothing to say. He stared, but kept silent. Lady Alice, if anything, looked even more apprehensive then he did. Thus, the time passed, each second at least three times its normal length.

Being in London made him feel breathless. There were so many people, so much noise and so many smells, many of them sadly rank. He supposed the inhabitants grew used to it, but he could not imagine what it would be like to have to cope with such a crowded mass of humanity every day.

Norwich is somewhat turbulent at present,” Adam said. “Maybe that is what they sensed.” “Norwich is always turbulent. Your county is known for the pig-headed, contrary, undisciplined nature of its inhabitants, Bascom. They are eager in little save to have everything their own way.

reminded him of Miss LaSalle’s behaviour the day before and his mother’s odd remarks about it. Miss LaSalle had not been present when he breakfasted, but she could not be unwell or she would not now be out visiting with his mother. His mother seemed to believe he should know why her lady companion was behaving in such a strange manner. How could he? He had hardly spoken to the woman and then only in his mother’s presence. Why on earth could women not be straightforward, like men were? Why should they expect you to guess at their concerns and interpret their moods accurately? If a woman wanted you to understand something important, would it not be far more logical to raise the matter openly? Somehow, it always seemed that the prettier the woman, the more she demanded that the men around her should be able to read her mind.

London is a devilish bad place for a young attorney to establish himself. Lawyers there are near as abundant as fleas—” “And just as unwelcome,” his sister said.

I may appear nothing but a foolish and an idle fellow, but I have a brain—one that is trained in legal matters and accustomed to extracting whole volumes of meaning from half a dozen words within a lease or contract.

that is indeed a tale to gladden any lawyer’s heart. A rival claimant to a title and a fortune! A marriage that may have been bigamous—perhaps deliberately so. A spurned wife now seeking her due. It takes little skill to prophesy years of legal claims and counter-claims, while the courts plod their elephantine steps through an undergrowth of facts and speculation and whole tribes of lawyers grow rich on the costs.

It’s well known that we lawyers will send you an account for the time expended in wishing you good day.

Whenever we’re driven to reach out and create something from nothing, whether it’s something physical like a chair, or more temporal and ethereal, like a poem, we’re contributing something of ourselves to the world. We’re taking our experiences and filtering it through our words or our hands, or our voices or our bodies, and we’re putting something in the culture that didn’t exist before. In fact, we’re not putting what we make into the local culture, what we make IS the culture. Putting something in the world that didn’t exist before is the broadest definition of making, which means all of us can be makers. Creators.

Maude tore her eyes away from the picture and met her ghastly reflection in the mirror. She could no longer recognize herself. Where was the girl, happy, content, and hopelessly optimistic about life? She was no longer there. She was gone to never come back. Murdered like her parents. Her parents had been murdered. They had died in a cell, mistreated, tortured. Their blood had been spilled. The Earth had drunk their blood. Rivers of blood had flowed from their lifeless bodies. They had been butchered like animals. Horrific images flashed through Maude’s brain as she envisioned her parents, Aaron and Danielle. They had names and faces now. She now understood why the Ruchets had been so reluctant to tell her the truth. How could she bear it? Suddenly, she laughed a laugh she didn’t recognize. It resembled a savage growl. She felt like she hated her parents. How could they save the world and not save her? They had thrust her to their “friends.” Robert Ruchet was her mother’s best friend. How was this even possible? It didn’t make any sense. How could Robert be anyone’s friend let alone her mother’s? Maude stopped laughing. Her hands shook uncontrollably. She couldn’t stop shaking all over as if possessed. There

Savages are dangerous neighbours and unprofitable customers, and if they remain as degraded denizens of our colonies, they become a burden upon the State.